Artist’s rendition of a satellite – paulfleet/123RF Stock Photo
As 2022 ended there were Earth Observation (EO) satellite launches, and as 2023 starts there were also EO launches.
It seems as the passing of a year barely makes a ripple in our industry. We’re going to start by looking back looking at the last launches of 2022:
China
Unsurprisingly, China was part of the last launches of the year. On the 27th December they put the Gaofen-11 04 EO satellite into orbit aboard the Long March 4B satellite from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Centre. This satellite, which forms part of the China High-Resolution Earth Observation System (CHEOS), will join the other three Gaofen 11 satellites in orbit, as Gaofen-11 01 was launched in 2018, Gaofen-11 02 in 2020, and Gaofen-11 03 in 2021.
Whilst the exact specifications of the instrument onboard is not known, it is believed to be a high resolution optical EO satellite collecting data for applications such as land surveys, urban planning, road network design, agriculture yield monitoring, and disaster relief support.
Israel
The last EO satellite to be launched in 2022 was the Israeli Earth Resources Observation Satellite C3, known as EROS C-3. This was put into orbit by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base on the 29th December.
This is the latest in the EROS series of satellites with the first, EROS A, launched in 2000. EROS-C3 will join the other active EROS satellites – EROS B, EROS-C1 & EROS-C2. This network is owned and operated by the Israeli company ImageSat International.
EROS-C3 has a multispectral camera capable of delivering high-resolution imagery with a spatial resolution of 60 cm for multiple spectral images and 30 cm in panchromatic mode, and has a swath mode of 11.5 km. Limited information is available about how the data is used, although ImageSat International note that the constellation ‘enables defence and intelligence organisations to conduct operations under complete confidentially’ which makes it fairly clear who are the key users of this data!
First Earth Observation Launches Of 2023
Yesterday, Tuesday 3rd January, SpaceX’s Transporter-6 took off on its sixth dedicated rideshare mission, putting over 100 payloads into orbit. There were a number of interesting EO related missions onboard including:
- Umbra-SAR Synthetic Aperture Radar satellites, 04 and 05. These satellites, for American firm Umbra Lab, offer X-band SAR data with a spatial resolution of 25 cm over a 16 square km area.
- ICEYE SAR satellites X21, X22 and X27. These are X-band satellites from the Finnish ICEye company who are developing a constellation with the aim of delivering near-ral time SAR data.
- Satellogic NuSat EO satellites: NuSat 32, 33, 34 & 35. The Argentina based Satellogic will increase its high resolution constellation to 30 strong with this launch, although two of the satellites (32 and 33) are primarily for the use of the Government of Albania and these satellites are also known as Albania 1 and 2.
- 36 Flock-4y Super Dove EO satellites for Planet will be deployed to replenish the Planet constellation offering 8-band multispectral imaging.
- 6 Lemur-2 satellites for the Spire constellation, that focus on environmental data and vessel tracking for ships and planes. The satellites being launched are Lemur-2 157, 158, 159, 160, 161 and 162.
- Menut for Open Cosmos, which is an EO CubeSat offering 5 m resolution and will focus on acquiring imagery over the Spanish region of Catalonia.
- STAR VIBE is an experimentation EO telescope for the Polish company Scanway Space.
- EOS Agrisat-1 is a satellite for the American company EOS Data Analytics, and was built by Dragonfly Aerospace. As its name suggests, it is an EO satellite focussed on agriculture applications and offers a ground resolution of 2.8 m for multispectral imaging and 1.4 in panchromatic mode.
Although not EO directly, it is interesting to see that there are a number of payload deployers on the rideshare helping to put payloads into orbit. For example, D-Orbit will have two of its ION tugs on board that will carry payloads for customers including Astrocast and AAC Clyde Space.
Summary
So, 2023 is starting at pace already and we’re only a four days in! Looks like EO and the satellite industry are going to continue to be active, which makes them exciting industries to be involved with.
